Tag: mothering

+TRAUMA AND THE 30,000 EGGS: HOW MUCH CAN WE TAKE BEFORE WE ARE OVERWHELMED?

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Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) represents an error in the ongoing processes of learning useful things in one’s life.  A traumatic experience can actually contain much more information than a person can actually use as one single individual.  The potential of what a traumatic experience can teach about survival needs to be applied (learned) in order to improve adaptation within the environment just in case a similar event happens again in the future.

Particularly in today’s world where we no longer exist in a tribal culture that would allow a whole group to learn from a dangerous experience, there can be “no room in the inn” on a personal level for the whole amount of new information that might be gained about survival from an event one person has had to experience alone.  Learning is thus interfered with on the individual level, and the wholeness of that person is interfered with, as well.  The result can be that their ongoing experience of being in their life is interrupted, and we then have a post-trauma circumstance.

If the information about what is needed to survive an overwhelming trauma cannot be shared ‘in a group’, the information out-matches the needs of a single person’s waking day and sleeping night.  Unprocessed information about trauma survival just sits in line, in the cue of ongoing information processing, and can ‘jump the line’ at every possible trigger that stimulates it – like it is impatient to be completed and finished.  It WANTS to used, and be useful.  That’s the nature of ongoing life.  Traumas are supposed to teach us something important about how to get along in a world that is not always safe.

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When an infant suffers traumas that create breaks in its ongoing experiencing of life, the interruptions will most often be built into its growing brain as dissociational patterns.  Its learning and adaptation will be interfered with just as it would be for an overwhelmed adult, only much more so.  Once these ‘crisis’ response patterns are built into the brain, they will be lying in wait to be used should any future overwhelming trauma occur.

Survival through evolution has required humans to have the widest possible range of responses to traumas.  If what is known cannot prevent a trauma from occurring, or does not allow for adaptation to a trauma, new responses must be learned.

Within a safe and secure range the best of all possible genetic phenotypes will be able to manifest.  Phenotypes are what we actually SEE on the ‘surface’ of who we are based on our genetic material as our genetic expression machinery has told our genes what to do on an ongoing basis.  If too much trauma exists during the early developmental stages of our lives through abuse, neglect, deprivation, etc., the actual phenotypes we end up with can be far different than they would have been if development had happened in a safe and secure, non traumatic environment.

Most mental illnesses, for example, are ‘visible’ phenotypes that might not have needed to develop if early trauma had not been present.  As soon as an early environment overwhelms an infant or young child with too much trauma, the body will interpret this as a threat-to-life situation, and use the most extreme adaptive phenotypes it can in order to cope with disaster.

The developing brain and body operates on a simple rule basis.  A safe world is run by safe rules and will bring out safe responses.  A dangerous world is run by dangerous rules and will bring out the most extreme adaptations possible – as needed.  Our phenotypes reflect how these rules are applied within our bodies.

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Too much or too little of anything can kill an organism.  Extremes push the body into an emergency, crisis response.  Trauma that reaches PTSD proportions for an individual represents a condition of too much information.  Information is only useful if it can be integrated and applied BY USING IT.  I believe it is because we so often are left without a ‘group’ or ‘tribe’ that would help us learn from the traumas that we are so at risk as individuals for becoming overwhelmed.  This appears obvious when we realize that strong safe and secure attachment relationships mediate the effects of traumas at every single age along the human lifespan continuum.

Making good use of the information that traumas present to us has to be in the direction of promoting and advancing life – for the individual, for the species.  Being a connected part of the ‘social group’ allows for a wider range of possibilities for learning from traumas while being isolated and alone narrows that range.

I think about it in terms of 30,000 eggs.  An ordinary family sized cake might require the input of 3 eggs, not 30,000.  Too many eggs would obviously ruin the cake!  Trauma eliminates the choice of deciding we don’t want so much overwhelming information.  Too bad.  Here it is.   What are we going to learn from it and how are we going to use this information for a better future?   We can’t decide NOT to try to proceed with our cake-bake-of-life with ONLY 3 eggs.  When life hands us 30,000 eggs, we better be ready and able to deal with it.

Trauma is an out-of-the-ordinary experience:  It is extra-ordinary, supra-ordinary.  So if we have to deal with 30,000 eggs, we better be a part of a very large family so that we can effectively bake a super-sized cake large enough to use the 10,000 times more information than what we could ordinarily make good use of by ourselves.  This is what community is truly all about.

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I suspect that in a perfect world no individual (family, group, etc.) would ever be given more traumatic information to deal with than what they could ordinarily use.  The more divided and isolated we are the ‘fewer eggs’ we can handle.  While being connected and safely and securely attached to others is not the only factor that leads to resilience, it is probably the most important one because we are a social species.  We did not evolve as separate beings cut-off from a whole, and our evolutionarily developed abilities to respond to trauma and to process it by learning new things when we need to, is NOT meant to happen separately, either.

Any time we try to go against the patterns that nature has given us, we are far more likely to suffer difficulties.  Healing from trauma is no different.  When the group – our family of origin – hurt us and did not protect us, and was also not there for us when we had our greatest need to depend on safe and secure attachment with dependable, available others,  we are much, much more likely to suffer from ‘too much information’, or information overload that results in a post-traumatic reaction.

Traumas happen.  Not being able to process the information contained in traumatic experience so that future responses will be better adapted responses leaves us baking the 30,000 egg cake when we can only, by ourselves, handle a 3 egg cake.  We need help.  We are made that way.

The more fragmented and insecure our connections are to others, the more at risk we are for being overwhelmed as ‘an army (or victim) of one’.  The more overwhelmed we are, the more likely we are to be fragmented (and dissociated) ourselves.  No single person was ever designed to ‘go it alone’, and certainly not infants and young children.

I say this because we cannot heal alone, either.

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+NOT AN EASY PAGE TO WRITE

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This is (follow this link) not an easy page for me to write –  through my tears and with my nose all drippy and goopy.  I do not wish to limit what I write about because of shame, or because of being too proud.  Yet at the same time it is not yet time to write about the specifics of this 9-year relationship that has brought me so much joy, multiplied ten thousand times by sadness, grief and sorrow.

It is not apologies or words in my own defense that I offer here.  I simply state what I know about what is going on right now, the same thing that has been going on for these 9 years as the inevitable ending of this relationship approaches.

Through my work to understand how my pain in the present connects directly to the pain from my childhood, I am coming to understand how vulnerable I have always been to end up loving a man such as the one I love now.  There has never been a simple cure for the harm that was caused to me by 18 years of severe abuse.  Yet I know more and more clearly what I want now.

I want peace.  Simple, pure peace.  I am not there yet.  I am not there.

For now, I can only offer this:  not an easy page for me to write

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Please access these pages on Domestic Violence and Abuse for important additional information —

From the Mayo Clinic on:  Domestic violence against women: Recognize patterns, seek help

The National Coalition Against Domestic Violence

Domestic Violence Awareness Handbook

Domestic Abuse Project

Psychological Abuse

More links to information about Psychological Abuse

The Silent Treatment

Abusive Relationships

Mental and Emotional Abuse in Relationships

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+OPENING OUR OWN HEARTS AND MINDS TO THE REALITIES OF CHILD ABUSE

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There are too many new letters being transcribed to include them all on the temporary page.  I am spending time right now working on the 1960 letters and am currently working on April and May of that year – with more to follow as they are filed within the months of 1960.

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I especially would like to recommend to readers the important comments made today on this blog by Paul M. McLaughlin.

Please visit the two comment pages he posted to:  Stop the Storm’s Contact Information Page and to the post HOW DID THE ABUSE CHANGE US?  Valuable links to his website, to the record of his work to prevent child abuse, and to his personal story are contained in his comments.

I am honored that Paul has shared the heroic story of his life as a survivor of 20 years of terrible childhood abuse with me and with my readers.  Thank you, Paul!

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I have benefited over the years from the efforts of many therapists that I was able to access on my pathway of healing.  Some of the words that I heard them tell me have returned when I have needed to remember them.  I would like to say a heartfelt “THANK YOU” to all the professionals working in a wide variety of fields to help not only prevent child abuse, but to help those of us who survived it, to heal.

After my work on the ‘writings’ yesterday I had great difficulty in sleeping last night.  It is now 9:30 at night and I am only now feeling ‘strong enough’ to approach any writing for today.

The words of two separate therapists from my past echoed in my mind today.  One of them said to me, over and over again, “Linda, always do what YOU need to do to take care of yourself.”  When I look back at the sessions I had with this woman, I remember that I had to take a tape recorder with me to record every session.  Without these recordings I could never remember one single thing we talked about together.

I didn’t understand dissociation at that time.  Nor did this therapist ‘waste’ any time explaining it to me.  We simply together found a way around the problem as it related to our sessions.  I would play the tapes over again several times between sessions, and doing so helped me to ‘grow into’ the topics we discussed.  But the single most important gift I received from this woman are the words I just mentioned.  “Always do what YOU need to do to take care of yourself.”

Those simple words contain within them a universe of healing potential.  They will never be words I will outgrow, or afford to ignore.  Today has been a day when I had to take special good care of myself.  Survivors need to learn how to do this for ourselves, always.

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The other set of words a therapist of my past told me that came into my mind today are about the process of healing itself.  She told me that this process is like a finely crocheted, beautiful doily.  What makes them attractive is the balance between tight and wide open spaces within the pattern.  She told me that when we sometimes work very hard on an ‘issue’ we are making the tight, close together, denser part of the pattern of our healing.  But we need the loose times, as well.  There are times we have to leave all of it completely alone, take a break, do whatever we need to do to give ourselves a rest from the ‘work’ itself.

I thought about these words today and am so grateful for the opportunities I have been given in the past to access quality therapy.  Each time of contact I have had with each ‘specialist’ gave me what I needed at that point in time.  Today I carry so much within me of what these people gave me – as well as the work I did for myself each step of the journey along the way.

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Reading Paul McLaughlin’s words echoed with the sadness inside of me about how hurtful ANY abuse is, but particularly the abuse of infants and young children.  I believe that we have a social taboo against truly allowing ourselves to look severe abuse of the tiniest of people straight in the eye.  No species endures if their most helpless offspring are not cared for and cherished.

While the taboos against harming infants and children exist for a wide purpose, I want to encourage all of us to build up our tolerance – like building and strengthening muscles – so that we can allow ourselves to know in our minds and in our feelings what the reality of early terrible abuse of young ones really is – that it exists, that it happens, that it has severe and lifelong consequences.

I am not suggesting that we pursue a morbid approach – just an educational one for ourselves as members of a culture that continues to need to ‘raise consciousness’ about child abuse and neglect.  Paul’s writings contribute to this denial-smashing.  True, Paul was born in 1948 and I was born in 1950, both of us in a time when public awareness and consciousness about child abuse was still in the stone ages.

But what touched me most today when I visited his website is that there were no doubt many, many, many people surrounding this boy and his twin sister who SHOULD have used common sense to intervene to protect these children.  I’m not going to be the one here to point the finger, but read his story and look at it yourself.  If we were all actors and actresses in a stage play of his childhood, what would each of us have been able to do differently from what the people actually did who were there?

Where and how in today’s world, where we each live our lives, can we apply new insights and new information so that if history ever repeats itself within the sphere of our individual influence we can do something BETTER to help a child – to help many children – that so desperately need someone to notice, pay attention, and care enough to help them?

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As always, thank you for reading – your comments are welcome and appreciated!

+LOOKING FOR MY STORY IN THE CHAOS OF MADNESS

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This is the link to one of the ‘article’ pieces I have found among my mother’s papers.  It was with August 1960 letters, but had no date on the paper it was written on.

My mother was certain that she was going to ‘someday’ write a book on homesteading, She specifically planned that her letters to my grandmother, written during this time were saved, and returned back to her.  Yet very, very few of the letters had any date placed on them at all.

I can estimate letter dates by the envelope postmarks, but many letters are NOT in envelopes and without dates it makes it extremely hard to know where to place the letters along the ‘timeline’ of my childhood years that I am trying to create!

My grandmother, an educated and astute woman, obviously knew of my mother’s plan because she was a participant in it.  Yet she did not make sure on her end, once she had received a letter, that she wrote at least the date the letter came into her hands if there was no clear postmark on the envelope – which happened often!

The inability to ‘tell a coherent life story’ in adulthood – or even during an abusive childhood – is a prime hallmark symptom of an insecure attachment-disordered pattern formed by ‘inadequate’ early infant and childhood interactions with caregivers.

My mother had such an insecure attachment pattern, which she GOT in her childhood from her interactions with her mother (and others).   It looks to me as I work with the writings — that went back and forth between these women for years — as if this total lack of organization or coherent ordering of all these carefully written and preserved letters about the story of homesteading, are themselves in a state that is a clear indication of the MESS that the insecure attachment patterns created in my mother’s life as well as in my own childhood.

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It is almost as if these letters, journal pages, pieces of articles my mother wrote, my grandmother’s response letters to my mother’s letters – all of them, in the tattered, confused, disorganized, often undated, never been sorted, hauled around in this box or that over thousands of miles and many, many moves, stored in assorted storage lockers for decades – are themselves all remnants of once-lived lives that were lived in a very similar fashion.  Yet they also reflect a certain value shared in common – they endured and they survived.  They are still here, as I am.

It seems to be my life’s work right now to find the stories in the stories.  I have amazing advantages that my mother and my grandmother never had in their lifetimes.  I have the very real gift of a computer, the gift of the internet, and the gift of this free blog space so generously provided by WordPress.com.   My sister gave me this computer for my writing.  My brother gave me this printer.  My children pay for my internet.  I am grateful to all of them.

My mother and grandmother cared enough about one another to write all these letters.  They cared enough to hold onto them, to keep them, to preserve them.  In the same strange way that I can never ‘blame’ my mother for her abuse of me because I understand how sick she was, I cannot ‘blame’ her for never, in her entire lifetime, being able to accomplish with them what she had hoped to do.  She could never write her own book.  She could never publish.  She could never tell her own coherent life story for the same reason she could not adequately mother her own children.

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These papers are in their own form of chaos, and within their words they tell stories of the chaos that was my childhood.  It would take an almost super human effort to actually create the coherent story now.  I would be very surprised if I can do it in my lifetime.  My process does not feel like ‘blogging’ to me.  It feel like ‘plogging’ as I spend hundreds and hundreds of tedious hours trying to find and create order out of this madness.

For every step I take I hope that if I can’t actually finish bringing this whole story together, maybe at least the work I am doing now will be picked up by another generation so it can be ‘finished’ in the future.  We are a family of writers.  Perhaps that is our curse.  Yet I feel as if all my ancestors’ words are being placed in safe keeping as I enter them into this clean white screen of my computer.  I feel honored to be able to share them with you., including this article piece that my mother wrote 49 years ago.

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+UNBELIEVABLE DELUSIONS – MY POOR BROTHER

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I am going to share this

November 9, 1960 letter

that I transcribed today. It is one my mother wrote to her mother, and is placed in the section on My Childhood Stories, and referred to as “The Troubles of John.”

(It will also be filed in the collection of other 1960 letters my mother wrote, which will include the February 2, 1960 letter that I also transcribed today.)

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While I have nearly 30 years’ of experience in coming to terms with what my mother did to me, I am almost ashamed to say that it is only now, right now, in the process of pulling all the various writings together that have to do with my family of origin, that I am beginning to develop enough of a tolerance for what my mother ALSO did to my siblings to actually be able to FEEL my feelings about what my mother did to THEM.

I cannot possibly tell my siblings’ stories.  Yet in the instance of this particular November 9, 1960 letter, mostly about my brother John nearly 50 years ago, my mother is writing his story for him when he is 10 years old.  I am reading her words and reacting to them as I feel my own terrible sorrow and tender sadness for the pain she had already caused my brother by that age.

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As far as I am concerned whomever it was that coined the phrase, “Read ‘em and weep,” could have been talking about this

November 9, 1960 letter.

I am experiencing a whole new level to my own healing —  being able to expand my emotional awareness of the harm that was done to me by the harm that was done to my siblings.  I cannot heal them.  But I can publish this letter and my comments to it today in honor of my dearly beloved Big Brother John. I love you!  Linda

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+LINK TO MY MOTHER’S 1955 (short) DIARY

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Although there were very few pages written in my mother’s 1955 diary, they was enough information there to provide some me with some insights about the year I turned four.  No doubt my mother was very busy during this year caring for the 3 children she already had under the age of five while she carried her 4th baby and gave birth on July 20, 1955 to my youngest sister.

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+NOW PUBLISHED – MOTHER’S 1945 DIARY AND MY INTRO TO IT

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Both of the following pages are now published online:  MY INTRODUCTION TO MY MOTHER’S 1945 DIARY, is placed on Stop the Storm, connected to my story of leaving home.

I placed it here because while my mother’s own writings as they are contained in MY MOTHER’S 1945 DIARY belong at Take Care of Mothers because they are her words of her own life that did not relate to my life as a child until I reached my own teen and young adult years as her daughter.

My introduction describes how my mother found ways of letting me know prior to my leaving home what her own young adulthood was like for her – as she contrasted it very clearly to my own experience of being a teen and young adult — as her daughter.  Believe me, unlike her, I had no fun at all.

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+APPROACHING MY MOTHER’S 1953 DIARY

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These are both completed now:

*MY INTRODUCTION TO MY MOTHER’S 1953 DIARY

**1953 – MY MOTHER’S DIARY – PART ONE

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I could not complete the transcription of my mother’s 1953 diary without stopping half way through the year.  I had to give myself permission to create a context of safety for myself as I continue to read her words.  The platform that I created for myself as I wrote my introduction to her 1953 diary feels secure enough for me to continue the transcription of her writings.  The transcription is not complete yet, but I will let you know as soon as they are published online as they will be contained within the following pages:

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*MY INTRODUCTION TO MY MOTHER’S 1953 DIARY

**1953 – MY MOTHER’S DIARY – PART ONE

**1953 – MY MOTHER’S DIARY – PART TWO

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+LINK TO THE JUNE 2009 ONLINE CHILD WELFARE DIGEST

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Here is an information-packed child welfare site, the Children’s Bureau Express.

Their June 2009 Online Digest contains such information as:

The month of June brings a new PSA campaign to encourage adoption from foster care. Helping youth is a focus, with a site visit report and a Federal interagency effort for all disadvantaged youth. And, as always, find great new resources from the T&TA Network.

This month, CBX looks at how community efforts can effect change in families’ lives. Examples from across the country show the benefits of collaborations across community agencies and populations.

CBX highlights evidence-based practices in parent training, housing-based efforts for transitioning youth, guiding principles for rural research, and the impact of parents’ probationary status on their children.

CBX offers tools for practitioners, including guidelines for community investigations of child injury, resources for implementing Fostering Connections, and an international manual to measure indicators of well-being.

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Check it out!!

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COMING SOON:  I am in the process of transcribing my mother’s 1953 diary, the year John turned 3, I turned 2 and Cindy was born.  Will be posted as soon as I complete it.

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+THE ABILITY TO WONDER AND BEING A WITNESS TO MY OWN ABUSE

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I began the page I wrote today (published under My Childhood Stories) in response to a reader’s post on my mother’s letters that I transcribed yesterday.  My writing rapidly led me in the direction of beginning to understand that I am both a witness abuse survivor of my own abuse at the same time I am a survivor of the abuse itself.  I am beginning to understand that these were two separate and different experiences that I had, NEARLY but not exactly at the same time, as I lived in one body, and that each affected me in different ways.  Like two different rivers feeding into one, both experiences are linked in differing ways to dissociation.

Today’s writing pathway also led into the subject of the gift of having the ability to wonder (or not ) and into a clear infant abuse memory that came to me shortly after I wrote the letter disowning my mother.

This entire writing is an important contribution to my growing understanding of a new ‘real reality’ that is separate and different from the reality that was built into my body-brain-mind during 18 years of abuse by my mother.

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